The Clone Redemption

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Transferring twenty-two hundred colonists—one thousand women, eleven hundred men, and one hundred SEAL clones—to New Copenhagen took an hour. Stripping the Sakura and shipping supplies down to the planet took two days.

Every morsel of food, be it frozen, dehydrated, powdered, extruded, or fresh, was sent to the planet. Power generators were removed from the ship and sent down to the planet, leaving entire decks without electricity. Weapons, everything that wasn’t built into the Sakura’s hull, were sent down, including fifteen low-gravity tanks that consumed such massive amounts of fuel that the colonists would never operate them—they would be torn apart and used for scrap metal; their engines were too inefficient for anything else. Beds, portable storage facilities, and furniture were sent down. So were cooking and eating utensils. Engineers even scavenged metal and wiring from the wall panels and floors.

Yamashiro stayed aboard the Sakura, overseeing the operation as men stripped the ship of nonessential items to send down with nonessential personnel. By the time they finished, the medical bay was empty, the team having pillaged light fixtures, wiring, and electrical panels as well as medicines, furniture, equipment, and flooring.

The entire third deck had been stripped down to its iron girders. Once the location of living quarters, rec rooms, Pachinko parlors, bars, and galleys, it now sat dark and empty. Eviscerated. Yamashiro and Takahashi quietly observed the carnage as the admiral made his final inspection of the ship.

“Admiral on deck!”

The crew, about eighty men and fifty SEALs, stood to salute Yamashiro. He returned their salute.

As they entered, Takahashi said something about his new bridge crew being ready. Yamashiro scanned the area, taking in the desks, the booths, the computers, the table at which he had spent the last three years looking at tactical displays and reading three-dimensional maps. He would not miss the bridge of the Sakura, not in the least.

Yamashiro nodded to sailors and returned their salutes. He shook a few men’s hands even though he wanted to leave. He felt old, even ancient. His head hurt, and he needed a nap. All these men will die saving me and the colony, he thought, and the weight of the thought pushed down on him.

Yamashiro no longer saw himself as an admiral. The bridge had become a foreign land to him, one that he needed to escape. He thanked the men nearest the hatch and left, a silent Takahashi at his side. As they stepped through the door, Yamashiro whispered, “How much do they know?”

“The SEALs know everything,” said Takahashi.

“And the sailors?”

“They know we are going to broadcast into the atmosphere and that it will be dangerous,” Takahashi said.

The hall was empty.

When it sailed into the Orion Arm, the Sakura had carried six thousand hands. Now it had thirty-eight hundred, most of them SEALs, who seldom ventured onto the upper decks.

“Are you going to tell them?”

Takahashi looked back to make sure no one had left the bridge behind them, then asked, “What should I tell them? It’s not a mission, it’s a death sentence. If I tell them what we’re really going to do …”

“Would you blame them?” asked Yamashiro.

“I can’t fight my crew and the aliens at the same time,” said Takahashi.

The hall was long and dim and silent. Half of the light fixtures had been stripped from the ceiling. They passed a row of dormant elevators, their bulky metal doors removed. The doors and the cables would not be used for their intended purposes by the colony. They would be melted down.

You will go down to your grave with a heavy conscience, thought Yamashiro, but he did not say it. Instead, he simply said, “I do not envy you, Hironobu, you carry too much weight on your shoulders.”

They continued down the hall until they reached the stairs.

“I won’t carry that weight for long,” said Takahashi. “No more than three minutes once we are under way.”

They reached the crowded corridors of the bottom deck. With their compound stripped empty and most of the crew off the ship, the SEALs milled about in the halls.

Yamashiro looked up and down the hall. In the muted light, the SEALs looked more like shadows than people. Groups of SEALs stood in dark corners speaking quietly among themselves. When they recognized the admiral, they snapped to attention.

Seeing them in their lines, as unmoving as statues, Yamashiro remembered the words kage no yasha and dismissed them quickly.

“Admiral, sir, Master Chief Oliver was looking for you,” said one of the SEALs.

“I would like to speak with him,” said Yamashiro.

The SEAL, a lowly petty officer third class, saluted and walked off in search of the master chief. In his dark suit, with his dark skin, the clone disappeared into his surroundings as he hurried down the hall. A moment later, two shadows appeared in the distance.

Both men stopped and saluted.

Takahashi and Yamashiro returned the salute, then Yamashiro said, “Master Chief, I wish you …success.”

“It’s been an honor, sir,” said Oliver.

Yamashiro took a deep breath, held it in his lungs for seconds, then slowly released the air. He searched the hallway, taking in every detail. This was the last time any of these sights would be seen by surviving eyes. From this moment on, everything that happens on this ship will be a secret that the dead will take with them.

Yamashiro wanted to say something. He wanted to tell the SEAL how much he admired his courage. He wanted to thank all of these men; but his throat and tongue felt swollen, and he found himself struggling to breathe.

“Admiral, may I make one last request on behalf of my men?” asked Oliver.

“Anything,” said Yamashiro.

“Sir, the men and I were wondering …”

As Oliver spoke, the hatch behind him opened and light spilled out. Looking over the SEAL’s shoulder, Yamashiro saw thousands of men standing at attention in rows. The master chief stopped speaking, and Yamashiro stepped around him to look in the doorway.

Wearing dress uniforms, the SEALs all faced a dais upon which ten men waited at attention. On that dais stood a barrel, and on that barrel sat a ceramic bottle of sake and a line of thimble-sized cups.

“Sir, if you would give us a proper send-off,” said Master Chief Oliver.

Yamashiro Yoshi bowed to the SEAL clone and marched into the room without saying a word. He had already transmogrified from an officer into a politician; but now he struggled against the tide of his instincts and forced himself to behave like an admiral. He scowled at the men as he stalked past them, neither smiling nor showing his pain.

And so the retired admiral climbed the steps of the dais, took his place behind the barrel, and, barking out orders in Japanese, told the ten senior chiefs and the master chief to step forward. He poured sake into the twelve ochoko and stood at attention as the men met his gaze. At his order, the men took their cups, and he took his. He toasted them; and then, at his order, they drank their wine, and replaced the cups on the barrel. The SEALs saluted him.

Yamashiro, standing at attention, extended his return salute as he looked up and down the rows of men. Struggling to hide his emotions, he dismissed the senior chiefs. Then he turned to the master chief, and said, “I must return to the colony.”

Oliver saluted one last time, and Yamashiro left the Sakura.

Yamashiro Yoshi felt overwhelmed by emotion. He walked quickly to the landing bay and wasted no time entering the transport that would take him to New Copenhagen. At the base of the ramp, he turned to his son-in-law.

Takahashi stood erect and saluted. His shoulders trembled, and Yamashiro knew the younger man was scared. He did not return the salute; instead, he embraced Takahashi Hironobu, the husband of his daughter, Yoko. “You’re a fine officer, Hiro,” he said. “I wish my daughter could see the man she has married.”

Yamashiro stepped onto the ramp, returned the salute, and forced himself to enter the transport without looking back.